HAC

Autistic aspec enby. SpIn in cats. Likes reading (mainly fantasy/sci-fi). Plays D&D (5e). Xe/xem or they/them.

[transfemme-shelterdog]

Why do you know so much about Nazism and their symbols? Really suspicious of you to know so much about Nazi symbols around the world

I have a few honors degrees in the following fields:

1. Criminology with a focus on hate crimes against trans individuals, and religious extremism

2. Political Science with a focus on far-right ideology

3. Biblical studies (the aim of this was to get a more grounded understanding of the Bible so I can attach what I learn to my other degrees, to hyper-focus on Christian far-right movements and better combat their rhetoric)

So, yeah. That's why I know so much about far-right symbols and their history, I've studied it and talked to people who are members of some of these groups.

But sure "suspicious", gonna start accusing me of being far-right now? Already got the "cis gay man", "actually a trans man", "not really trans", "pedo for being ok with dating/intimacy with an agereg" accusations against me, might as well add another!

[vaspider]

"Why do you know so much about the symbols of a group of people who want you dead?"

Well, you see... I like not getting murdered.

[bananonbinary]

“oh no we need to practice for our fake dating” is the funniest trope to me cause like. there are so many people who force themselves into a shitty relationship they hate just because of amatonormatiivity that it’s an ingrained part of popular culture to joke about hating your partner.

which is to say, oh my god you dont need to hold hands and go on fake dates, you don’t even need to agree on a single detail of your cover story beforehand. you can literally stand 6 feet apart at all times and look profoundly uncomfortable and all anyone will think is “yikes™. not my problem”

[bananonbinary]

actually people should address this in fanfic more because “i know we could half-ass it, but i would never fake mistreat my fake husband, how dare you” is absolutely delightful

[thekijs]

New trope: fake dating for spite.

“Look, my only goal here is for our pretend relationship to be demonstrably healthier than Aunt Rita and Uncle Carl’s fifteen year, three child marriage - which means the bar is so low we probably can’t fuck this up”

[aurorawest]

preserving @river-gale’s tags for posterity because yes. yes. this is it. you get it.

[maruposting]

the way the ipad has undone literal decades of tech literacy is actually unforgiveable

[maruposting]

and I truly do mean the ipad having an effect on EVERYONE, not just kids or the elderly. the technological trend to rely on a dedicated app on a touch screen mobile device for seemingly everything has been active sabotage to your own technological freedom, perpetuated by corporations.

like do you have any idea how many people don't even know that adblockers exists? That you can download other browsers?

[maruposting]

Ever think about the active verbal campaign against Android devices? Like "haha funny,android cameras bad and android tablets are ugly!" Even among the popularity of touch screen mobile devices you have people talking about how iPhone and iPad are better than Android to the point where it has ruined Android devices. This is to close off your tech environment!!! You used to be able to sideload anything you want on Android, and pirate programs, customize the data you are willing to give out, debug mode your own device, and way way more! Now unless you have a rooted phone and some PC knowledge you're stuck in yet another closed tech environment controlled by marketplace apps riddled with ads and malicious data practices.

[maruposting]

you're right to be this upset, especially when this stems from companies making money off this kind of manufactured struggle.

If you weren't someone who knew file storage solutions imagine how easy it would be to fall victim to some silicon valley ass app advertising some garbage like

"Can't get all your files in one place educators? Try ProjectStream! Keep all your class files in a remotely accessible server with built in AI assistant! 99.99 per month or 599.99 per year!"

The obfuscation of basic computer functionality is basically a predatory market all on its own, actively hindering the lives of people everywhere in every field.

[thereschocolateonmykeyboard]

Honestly, as someone who grew up in the 90ies/00s and had no access to apple products at all until recently, I just find using the apple infrastructure so frustrating? I have an ipad because of Procreate, and the fact that the file system is so opaque (or actually non-existent but how???) is frustrating as all hell, coming from Windows/Android where I can easily structure my storage the way it works best for me and moving files doesn't involve "sharing" them (which is not what's happening it's just named sharing which is so stupid don't even get me started... I need to realize to use the share button to save something to my own device??? fuck off.) and it also doesn't take five steps to actually save a file I downloaded to my goddamn device. Plus, downloading files just doesn't work for all browsers??? If you try and download a file through Firefox on an ipad it just won't do anything. Why the fuck???

Seriously, the fact that not only is the apple eco system the walled garden from hell, but it's also structured in ways that make it really tricky to work cross-platform if you've never used a non-apple device and just don't understand what it is you're actually trying to, do tells me everything I need to know about that stupid company. And yes, I can appreciate that the products are cool and good etc. But they have some very significant downsides that people who have never used anything else just aren't even aware of. Plus, making cool products doesn't mean a company doesn't suck big time.

[flawlest]

[the-real-seebs]

The scariest shit I see always comes from people who are quite confident that, being very loving, they could not be doing anything abusive.

[papercook1e]

Whoever wrote this, slayed so hard with all these statements, truer words have never been spoken

[viralfrog]

[notsafeforbinary]

[lillylikescats]

I'm an electrical engineer and for the longest time I was saying that electricity and electronics isn't magic, but think about it.

You literally have to collect rare stones from remote locations, put them into specific formations to work. All of this gets written down in symbols which don't make sense to the uninformed. It gets powered by energy which can not be seen in most cases.

Like what else do you want. What's your standard for calling something magic.

[transcribepaige]

"It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works."

Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men (Discworld #30)

[spirulin4]

what ppl defending kids on ipads don’t seem to understand is that there are other ways to keep kids occupied. my mom had a whole bag full of little toys and games for me to play with while waiting in lines at disney world. once your kid is like 7 or 8 they can read a book. they can color. or they can literally just sit there and imagine things. i did that a lot as a kid.

[spirulin4]

thanks for putting your wrong and bad commentary in the tags where i still have to read all of it. most of what you said is untrue.

[imyselfamstrange]

OP: giving children too young to process things so much access to ipads isn’t good for them maybe.

People in the notes: So you hate moms??? You’re ableist?? You think we should go back to the Dark Ages?? (My personal favorite because it makes no sense) you’re poor shaming??

Why is it so difficult to explain that children not developing fine motor skills and losing their attention spans is bad actually??

[ladjarica]

Genuine question? Why do IPad parents act like there's nothing else you can give your child to play with. Ok maybe they don't like reading, or coloring and want to play something. Tetris consoles are still available, so are those handheld water game thingies ( where you have two buttons and the air pushes plastic rings around). These will occupy your kid for longer but still it won't make them what to rip your throat if you decide to take it from them.

Like your child should learn how to be bored but if you truly need a break there are better options than allowing them access to endless TikTok videos.

[smegorl]

Know what's cheaper than an IPad? A fuckin etch-a-sketch, a little fidget toy, a stick.

[saddeningamountofredgummiebears]

Like, technology has its place but it shouldn’t be used as a replacement for actual parenting and education. My almost 3 year old is really good at entertaining herself because she has a lot of opportunities to practice being bored. She’s learned how to behave at restaurants and wait in lines without using a screen. The only time we utilize a tablet in public is when we’re in the car for longer than 30 minutes and even then she doesn’t use it the whole time she frequently takes breaks on her own to sing songs or point out stuff out the window

[imhere-imqueer-ilikedeer]

I cannot begin to explain to you the disappointment I felt on finding out that “match my freak” was a sexual thing and not a level of how insane you are with your friends

[au-kittenby]

I have the testosterone!

[transgenderer]

so obviously i get why people's imagined-distant-past is *factually wrong*, you have to actively learn the correct thing and its easy to be misled, but indepedent of correctness there's a tendency towards uniformity that is very odd. like, discussions of "what hunter gatherer life was like". itd be like asking what life currently is like! it's like different things! life in mumbai is not life in bihar, let alone life in dallas, or beijing, or lagos, etc etc. societies are different from each other! like, obviously you can make *some* generalizations. but the past was vastly less uniform than the present is! literally thousands of societies with different practices, ways of getting food, worldviews, etc etc. like "hunter gatherer" is a useful category but its very far from a homogenous category

[tbonechessor]

Problem with making sci fi dungeons is coming up with places that aren't just military tech bases, research facilities, mines or abandoned space stations.

I have the entirety of modern life to pull from and I come up blank somehow.

[swishysword]

fair, though let me make unsolicited suggestions anyways in case it helps:

A highspeed railcar, ideally big enough for freight so that you can make "walls" from various crates and scatter interesting/useful stuff around them. At some point either coming across a locked or barricaded door and having to crawl out and deal with the rushing wind and timed hazards like signs and tunnels.

The surface of a dyson sphere, preferably still under construction, so you can have a mixture of purposeful design, open areas exposed to the sun, control rooms to manage energy or maybe even move platforms around for passage.

The interior of a luxury space cruise, with the added benefit of being able to make some wild themed rooms on the justification of "it's rich people being excessive, again".

Future library, with increasingly bizarre security systems for the seemingly endless parade of even more restricted sections.

A cathedral for some future sci-fi religion. Themed statues that shoot lasers from their eyes, stained-glass that turn into thousands of coloured drones, and you get to reuse any of your greatest hits from your local fantasy campaign but refluffed as robot-slash-art-slash-security system.

[tbonechessor]

@five-by-five I'm adding your additions here because I think they are fucking awesome.

Anyone is completely free to add their sci-fi/space opera dungeon ideas here.

[nekoprankster218]

Thought of this while reading but: (this is all one idea, each point is just a different layer to it)

Large skyscrapers with dozens, maybe a hundred different floors

Most likely office buildings of mega-corps who can not only afford to build such buildings but also require all that space

Maybe evacuated due to a threat the party is responding to, either externally or even something caused internally, like mega-corps messing with shit they shouldn’t have

Maybe even completely abandoned due to messing with shit they shouldn’t have, and now the threat is getting ready to leave the quarantined building unless the party can stop it

Or the building is completely occupied and the goal of the mission is infiltration and stealth, stealthily going by security checks and convincing all the tired, burned out office workers you’re supposed to be there, trying to reach one of the uppermost floors avoiding as much conflict as you can

[swishysword]

I'm all for turning this into modern/sci-fi dungeon megapost hours here

A dam, churning as water passes through and filled with complex machinery to keep things working. With a variant for it being after some environmental change that drained the reservoir and now the dam is the only passage across a chasm, with the party needing to adjust the now-defunt mechanisms so they can pass through.

A hab dome in some extreme environment, an abandoned colony that only just got started. Not unlike some of the other suggestions but a bit more "open" at the costs of the risk of environmental hazards.

Adjacent to the "military tech base" thing is, of course, a spaceship. Presumably with the party launching an attack on it from a boarding vessel at some point. Mix it up by having the ship they're attacking currently docked with another ship, exchanging supplies or personnel, so now you've got two potential dungeons ships to traverse through. Maybe one is transporting cargo and has lesser security, so you board that one so you can cross over to the higher security one.

Fancy space McMansion, with a courtyard (complete with hedge maze), a fancy pool (that's also a weird underwater course or boat racing rally because this is the future wealthy), the mansion interior with Resident Evil style puzzles, and of course the bunker holding all the valuables/target for assassination/hidden intel.

A place struck by a timestorm, so you have a bunch of different zone of the "same dungeon" that flickers into different things. Sometimes it's underconstruction, sometimes it's a military base, sometimes it's a club from a city in another era, and sometimes the planet is undergoing an invasion. All instances of the same timestorm across the ages, existing simultaneously, and you have elements from one zone spilling into the next so you have an eclectic mix of challenges, but also the potential to find something that doesn't exist in your time.

[swishysword]

Sorry I'm in the mood to add more:

Rich person's menagerie. While I'm not particularly a fan of killing a bunch of endangered space animals, you can have a bit of characterization mixed in where it's not really endangered animals but rather whatever the owner thinks is "cool" which just so happen to be encounter appropriate enemies. Rooms themed around their natural environments (rooms clearly too small and thus adding to the agitation, rooms that are big for the owner's "favorites"), corridors between exhibits with patrolling guard bots, maintenance tunnels. Lends itself to puzzle interactions (don't make eye contact with the space gorilla and you can pass through the room), and environmental interactions (guards in the way? push them into the eel pit). Can be there to rescue one of the animals, or it's a route into one of the other dungeons suggested.

"The Collector" aka, some person's fiercely guarded vault or spaceship full of art, jealously guarded by the finest security they could get their hands on. Maybe some of the art itself is dangerous: "This pillar is made out of more Psycite than seven systems naturally produce. The artist tuned all of it to express the pure psychic wave length of pain as a means of invoking a sense of universal emotion between all species... also save or be staggered from feeling like all your nerves are on fire when you're in the room." Naturally you could be there to steal one of the pieces, or it could just be a side hobby of your villain.

[gamecubefan]

how about one of those giant data center complexes that houses all the servers for ChatGPT or Bitcoin or something? they use insane amounts of water and energy to keep running, so it could also have like, an external area with solar/hydro power machines? but inside it's just a mostly empty vault of row upon row of server towers?

[professionalmomentruiner]

A factory, operating automatically or inoperative or maybe with machines missing (Chrono Trigger!)

More specifically, a chip fab (future is gonna need a lot of those)

Space Cheesecake Factory

Space Abandoned Disney World

Subway system (whichever Planet of the Apes that was)

Museum

Airport

Shipping terminal

Space container ship

Ferry (water or space)

Racetrack of some kind

Botanical garden (carnivorous plants to taste)

Golf course

Sports stadium

Apartment complex

Parking garage

Space Home Depot

Farming area on a space station

Library or archive

[queenjulia24]

HOLD UP HOW WAS I NOT AWARE OF THIS

[jackironsides]

Because asexuals were systematically harassed off Tumblr and other social media over a span of years, and when they remained, they no longer talked about the signs and in-jokes of the community, because that would attract harassment. Thus these signifiers weren't passed along.

That's why you didn't know.

[foldingfittedsheets]

It is insane to me that timestamps are optional on this webbed site. A major context clue is just opt in so I’ll reblog something from four years ago and people think it’s happening right just now like babe. Enable your timestamps. Why are you stumbling through the world with one eye closed?

[mxtomituck]

Wait how. I thought they just got rid of them????

[foldingfittedsheets]

You gotta opt in.

[tuulikki]

Genuinely timestamps unlock some of the best experiences on this website. You get to see majestically ancient shitposts still circulating, still funny, and appreciate that this shit was funny in 2014 and is funny now. And you get to see people flip their lids over nonsense that got resolved five years ago.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I didn't know timestamps were an option on here but now I do I'm gonna leave them off. I prefer to blunder in the dark expanse of history, unmoored from time itself as the gods intended when they shaped this site from the primordial clay of hell

[eravioli]

I just started grad school this fall after a few years away from school and man I did not realize how dire the AI/LLM situation is in universities now. In the past few weeks:

I chatted with a classmate about how it was going to be a tight timeline on a project for a programming class. He responded "Yeah, at least if we run short on time, we can just ask chatGPT to finish it for us"

One of my professors pulled up chatGPT on the screen to show us how it can sometimes do our homework problems for us and showed how she thanks it after asking it questions "in case it takes over some day."

I asked one of my TAs in a math class to explain how a piece of code he had written worked in an assignment. He looked at it for about 15 seconds then went "I don't know, ask chatGPT"

A student in my math group insisted he was right on an answer to a problem. When I asked where he got that info, he sent me a screenshot of Google gemini giving just blatantly wrong info. He still insisted he was right when I pointed this out and refused to click into any of the actual web pages.

A different student in my math class told me he pays $20 per month for the "computational" version of chatGPT, which he uses for all of his classes and PhD research. The computational version is worth it, he says, because it is wrong "less often". He uses chatGPT for all his homework and can't figure out why he's struggling on exams.

There's a lot more, but it's really making me feel crazy. Even if it was right 100% of the time, why are you paying thousands of dollars to go to school and learn if you're just going to plug everything into a computer whenever you're asked to think??

[plaidadder]

That last question is what drives me insane. You are paying that money to learn. Using ChatGPT prevents you from learning. By using it you are essentially setting your tuition money on fire.

You might not grasp that because you think that the important thing about going to college is to get the credential so you can get hired and make more money. OK. You have a credential but you don't have the skills it's supposed to stand for. At some point, you will need the actual skills; and you will not have them. Then what?

Also: the tech industry is not benevolent. If you become dependent on AI to do your thinking for you then whoever designs the AI gets to determine what you can and can't think. You really trust big tech to do that? You want to be in a position where you can only write what AI will enable you to write, and only think what AI will enable you to think? You think that's going to be good for your career or your life or your fucking...soul?

[aaliyahbreaux]

I wonder how many gay people are actually transgender & dont know it because people thing being transgender is transitioning when it’s literally just not being cis.

[aaliyahbreaux]

like I had a friend tell me last night “all my life I wanted to be a girl. even to this day, like if someone told me I could transition & look like you or *insert another trans woman idk* I would do it in a heartbeat” and when I was like omg ur transgender he was surprised? like he was like wait just wanting to be a girl makes me transgender even if I dont do anything about it? and like its harder to pinpoint non binary people but if u have a desire be a different gender ur transgender. transitioning is a choice but being transgender is not.

[divinegaeity-deactivated2023101]

“One of the symptoms of being a girl is wanting to be a girl.” Don’t remember where I heard that but the quote is my life.

[lumberjackloverboy-moved]

This is one of the posts I can explicitly pinpoint as helping me realize that I might not be cis. The biggest symptom of being trans is wanting to not be your gender. It can also be dysphoria, it can also be euphoria, it can also be presentation, but wanting to be something else is all you really need.

[aceofsquiddles]

#wait so ur telling me#‘i dont want to have a gender’#can mean#‘i dont have a gender??’ I would also like to know… for reasons

[accept-nothing]

Confirmed. How to know you’re agender: You don’t want to be anything else. You look at the options for gender and gender presentation and decide to go back to bed

[aceofsquiddles]

Bold of you to assume I got out of bed

Nah but seriously thanks for the insight

[avon-vila]

So, if I look at gender and say “this is some bullshit and I want no part of it”, I guess that makes me agender?

[saint-batrick]

if that’s how you wanna identify, yeah.

feeling anything mentioned in this post doesn’t mean you have to identify as trans, but feeling anything in this post is literally all that’s necessary to identify as trans if you want to.

fuck gatekeepers forever.

[zim-kinnie]

👏if👏you👏don't👏feel👏cis👏you're👏possibly👏not👏cis👏

[hasenfu]

i mean this is literally what jvn said

[deathcomes4u]

This is one of those things where you can go 25+ years of your life not realising that actually no not everyone secretly wishes they were some mashup of male and female and that you are, in fact, genderfluid as fuck.

[kyraneko]

You can want to be the other gender.

You can want to be another gender.

You can want to divorce all connection to the gender you were born into.

You can want to keep it as an origin point that shapes your journey.

You can want to be more than one gender at once.

You can want to be more than one gender, at different times.

You can want to be no gender.

You can want to be sort of in between genders.

You can want to be both genders.

You can want to be rid of gendered body parts you already have.

You can want to keep gendered body parts while also being another gender.

You can want to be rid of them but not want the side effects of excising them.

You can feel dysphoria at being shaped like/viewed as/treated like a gender you don’t want.

You can feel euphoria at being shaped like/viewed as/treated like a gender you do want.

You can change your mind or adjust your goals or refine your wishes.

You can be stationary and fixed in your identity.

You can be fluid and changing.

You can be extremely gendered in your presentation.

You can be not very gendered in your presentation.

You can be androgynous.

You can be a little of both.

You can be a lot of both.

If gender is a line you can cross, as the words trans (across/on the other side of) and cis (here/on the same side of) indicate, you can cross it in any way you like, including dancing on top of it.

Be happy.

Be you.

[violetwylde]

This is an extremely affirming post.

[silks-stuff]

Bless tumblr for posts like this, because even though I’m older than a lot of people here this stuff still applies, in a way moreso because it’s stuff that I never had the opportunity to process in my actual childhood. So I’m processing it now. And this shit really helps, so thanks.

[closet-keys]

I think vividly describing the specifics of your desires is an understandable result of not being able to engage in any of them, and is a step in the right direction from a starting place of denying and suppressing them.

but we shouldn't be encouraging each other to allow our imaginations to rot away like this. we need more from our lives than just being able to describe ourselves as "people who desire to live another way"

we all deserve better than that. we deserve to actually live the lives we desire.

and no, that doesn't mean I'm not acknowledging all the factors that contribute to people not being able to live the lives they want. it means that we need to stop offering "acceptance" for this and start collectively really feeling the pain of this reality. it's not just apolitically "an equally valid choice"-- it is a tragedy. it is an injustice.

people who are structurally denied the ability to live their lives on their own terms don't need "validation", they need our support to carve out any autonomy they can find.

it's not enough to desire another world, we need to build it.

[closet-keys]

#how im feeling abt the its valid to not transition posts#(not ascribing this to op)

you can ascribe it to me, cause I agree.

the OP is not limited to this, but at the same time this is very much a pro- "actually help your trans friends and community get the care they need instead of telling them being denied access to it is valid" message

something I've been talking about with @mellomaia lately is how often the results of marginalization and social isolation are individualized as "choices" and "preferences" that someone is making.

her example was autistic people who grew up really wanting close friends who they could trust, but being constantly excluded and harassed for reasons beyond their control, then learning to stay quiet and alone to avoid bullying. people see autistic kids having learned to give up on trusting other people, an extremely powerless and hopeless state, and assume "oh, they're shy, they just prefer to be alone." eventually when everyone tells you that you're shy, you prefer to be alone, this is just how you are fundamentally, you start to internalize it, and then your will is broken to even try to make trusting connections with others years later when your circumstances are different.

I think this happens with trans people so often too. we might really want to have a different relationship to our bodies, to transition, to live different lives than the ones we were assigned, but are constantly denied access to enacting our desires. and then, in this extremely powerless and hopeless state, we turn to our communities and are told how valid it is to not come out, to not transition, to not take any risks that would move us closer to liveable lives, and we start to internalize that this state is who we are. and even when conditions change and we could start HRT, (or electrolysis or surgery or any other sort of healthcare), we talk ourselves out of it because other people get to have that and not us.

we all deserve better from each other. we all owe each other better.

[androgynealienfemme]

Food for thought

[esoanem]

Yeah, this sort of stuff serves several purposes, including:

Confuse the masses as to what the actual law is

Get people to obey in advance

Demoralise the opposition

Signal intention to supporters

[alex51324]

^^ I was thinking, like, "surely we all remember this from last time," but then I thought about it again, and realized that there are people who voted this year, who wouldn't even have been in their teens during the previous Trump rodeo.

So yeah, if you weren't following it last time, there will be a lot of Executive Orders that get walked back, struck down, or, once subjected to even mildly rigorous legal interpretation, turn out to have little or no effect.

When you see that Trump has signed an EO about something that seems drastic and scary, take a breath and wait a few hours, then see what the experts are saying about it.

[queeranarchism]

True. But compared to last time, Trump does seem to put a lot more effort into achieving that anticipatory obedience, intimidating opposition and getting people out of the way who could block his EOs.

Not every EO will become a real thing that will effect your life. A lot of them will not achieve anything. Take a breath, wait.

But do be vigilant. And once it's happening in your streets, don't just point out that it's not law, ACT.